Account Based Selling Blog

Jill Konrath coined the term Use the News– when she unveiled her breakthrough methodology of Trigger Event Selling. The concept is very simple; companies share their achievements / goals in the form of press releases and we as sales people should align our products and services to help reinforce those achievements / goals. If a company takes the time, energy, and effort to create a press release then that company obviously thinks the topic is very important. The opposite is also the case. If a company is receiving bad press then that company wants to be able to tell the media, stock holders, and customers that that company is doing everything within its power to rectify the situation. And more importantly, has the process in place to ensure it won’t happen again.

Brian Carroll – B2B Lead Blog, July 26, 2016

Savvy Sellers combine Trigger Event Selling with Account-Based Selling by looking for these potential selling activities within their targeted accounts. This isn’t a new idea, Google News Alerts can be set up for every targeted account inside of a seller’s territory and has been available for over a decade. The best part about Google News is that it’s free as well.

The problem with Google News alerts however is that it sits outside of Salesforce.com, and as my old sales manager told me, “If it’s not in Salesforce.com – it doesn’t count.” Trigger Events need to be inside the Salesforce.com account record available for the entire account team to see. A BDR needs to reference an account using the same trigger on which a sale person is building a business case that will be strategized with a sales manager. Only then can we link Triggering Events to Account-Based Selling successfully.